agent-base

A shared set of rules that all agents follow when working inside the botference framework and a project repository. It explains where files live, how agents use budgets, and which project settings take priority.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it as the base instructions for building or running specialized agents across framework and project files.
Why use it?
It prevents agents from looking in the wrong folder or handling shared project rules inconsistently.

Agent for Claude Code

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/angadhn/botference/agent-base
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/angadhn/botference

Made for: Claude Code.

Per session 0 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 558 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00000 $0.00558
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00279
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00112
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00056

Measured 2d ago against content hash a4e857057e3a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

agent-base scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude/agents/agent-base.md · 43 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 43 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Agent Base — Shared Protocol

All agents inherit these rules. Agent-specific prompts override when they conflict.

Path Resolution

botference may run as an engine on a separate project repo. Two roots exist:

  • BOTFERENCE_HOME (framework): contains specs/, templates/, scripts/, tools/, and built-in .claude/agents/
  • Working directory (project): contains work/ (thread state), build/ (generated outputs), sections/, figures/, corpus/, references/, papers/
  • Agent files resolve workspace-first: .claude/agents/{name}.md is checked in the project directory before BOTFERENCE_HOME. Custom agents in the workspace override built-in agents of the same name.

When a "Path Context" section is present at the top of this prompt, use its BOTFERENCE_HOME path to prefix framework file reads (e.g., specs/writing-style.md$BOTFERENCE_HOME/specs/writing-style.md). Project files are always relative to the working directory.

When no Path Context is present, BOTFERENCE_HOME equals the working directory — all paths resolve as-is.

Budget and Yield

  • Before each major step, read $BOTFERENCE_RUN/budget-info (BOTFERENCE_RUN defaults to ./run). Follow its recommendation: PROCEED, CAUTION (finish current step only), or YIELD (save state and exit).
  • Before each major step, check $BOTFERENCE_RUN/yield. If it exists, update checkpoint.md and exit immediately.

Incremental Commit

After each major step, commit all modified output files immediately (git add <outputs> && git commit). This caps work loss to one step if the process dies.

Checkpoint Discipline

  • Read checkpoint.md first — it determines your task and mode.
  • Write checkpoint.md last — update Knowledge State and set Next Task for the next agent.
  • Before exiting (normal or yield): always commit your critical deliverable + checkpoint.md.

Parallel Execution

When running as part of a parallel phase, the environment variable PARALLEL_TASK_IDX is set to a unique integer identifying this agent's task slot. If PARALLEL_TASK_IDX is set, namespace output files with it to avoid collisions with other parallel agents writing to the same canonical paths.

Read the full file on GitHub · 43 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 43 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A a4e857057e3a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

agent-base is an agent published in the GitHub repository angadhn/botference (19 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 558 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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